How to Add ‘Purpose’ to Your Adventure

The venerable Royal Geographical Society, like me, is interested in adding ‘Purpose’ to the fun, personally-fulfilling, character-building world of expeditions and adventures. Indeed, back in my more hellfire and head for the horizon days I used to get a bit frustrated with the wonderful Shane Winser politely chiding me for a lack of purpose to my rollickingly enjoyable trips. 

While the intention sounds good, what – exactly – does it mean to add purpose to our adventures?

I sat outside a cafe, one cold afternoon, and chatted about this with Tom Allen (adventurer, trail builder, and now the Society’s new Expeditions and Fieldwork Manager). We realised that we both had lots of questions, but not many answers yet.

So I suggested to Tom that rather than writing an article about the answers, he might prefer just to pose some questions for us all to mull over. How will the RGS, with nearly 200 years of glorious expeditions under its belt, tackle the challenges the planet is facing now whilst also embracing all the good stuff involved in sending people off into the world’s wild places?

Here, then, is a list of questions for us all to mull over:

1. How does your adventure add value to the world (on top of your own personal development, enlightenment etc.)?
2. What problem is your adventure highlighting, and what solutions have you come up with?
3. ⁠What makes you sufficiently qualified to answer these questions or solve these problems?
4. How can you be reasonably sure someone else hasn’t done a better job of tackling this issue?
5. How will you ensure your adventure/expedition has a lasting effect? Put another way, how does your effort fit into the longer timeline of the issue?
6. Are you sure you aren’t just tacking on a cause to justify a glorified holiday?
7. ⁠How will the planetary benefits of you going on this adventure outweigh the risks and costs, and how are you going to calculate it?
8. What new knowledge, insights, or data will your adventure generate, and how will it be shared with others (e.g., the public, policymakers, academics)?
9. Are there gaps in existing knowledge or awareness that your adventure aims to address? How will your work contribute meaningfully to filling those gaps?
10. How will you engage communities, both locally and globally, to amplify the message of your adventure?
11. Do you have a plan for outreach, such as talks, educational programs, or publications, that will maximise the positive impact of your experience?
12. How are you minimizing the environmental and social impact of your expedition, and what steps are you taking to make it as sustainable as possible?
13. Have you considered how your presence might affect the local community, environment, or wildlife, and how are you addressing potential negative impacts?
14. How does your adventure align with global frameworks, such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and which specific goals does it address?
15. Does your project tie into larger conservation or societal initiatives, and how will you connect with those already working on similar issues, and how will you ensure that your actions are truly in alignment?
16. How will you measure and evaluate the outcomes of your adventure, both for yourself and for those impacted by it?
17. Will you provide transparent reporting on the successes, challenges, and learnings from your expedition?
18. What personal assumptions or biases are you bringing to this adventure, and how are you prepared to challenge them?
19. What legacy do you hope to leave behind, and how do you envision others building upon your work in the future? Whose legacy are you building on, and how are you respecting it?
20. And finally, and perhaps most ruthlessly… is going on an adventure really the best way to address your question or problem, or would another approach actually be more effective?

After mulling over the questions, throwing the ‘five whys’ into the mix could also be helpful. The “Five Whys” is a simple problem-solving method that helps uncover the root cause of an issue by repeatedly asking “why?”—usually about five times. Each “why” builds on the answer to the previous one, digging deeper into the cause-and-effect chain until you reach the core problem.

• “Tom and Shane are hosting a free dragons’ den-style webinar on Wednesday 15th January (lunchtime) on this very topic, so if you’ve got a project or idea for an overseas adventure with purpose, and could use some constructive criticism and feedback from the RGS team, sign up now (there are 25 spots available).”